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Forums code of conduct/good behavior

Added by Felix Schäfer over 14 years ago

I feel the need for a code of conducts of sorts in the forums, as I have now several times refrained from intervening because I wasn't sure what the "official" or "accepted" policy was. Two topics come to mind:

  • Spam: delete the post or replace it with [spam removed]? How many spam posts qualify you as a spammer and get you blocked?
  • Advertisement: this one is a little trickier, and it's been for the most part ads for hosted redmines. I'm fine with (real) people posting some links to their hosting solution or whatever else commercial stuff related to redmine, but I am sick of some of them (ok, it's only been one I really noticed for now) jumping in in every (literally every) other thread presenting a hosted solution to make a somewhat idle comment and post a link. It seems it has gotten a bit better, but I'd still like a clear policy on what is accepted and what is not. My proposal would be to restrict each provider to his/her own thread, maybe even make a dedicated forum for commercial announcements (though I suppose that would mostly defeat the purpose of being present where the users are… oh well.).

Again: thoughts? Or counter-proposals?


Replies (11)

RE: Forums code of conduct/good behavior - Added by Muntek Singh over 14 years ago

  1. One(1) spam post makes you a spammer. Account should be deleted and blocked
  2. I propose a wiki page "Commercial Offerings" that is strictly controlled. One text line a one link per advertisers. Each advertiser is allowed on thread on the forums, cross-linking their solution in other threads is considered spamming and grounds for a ban.
  3. Some additional rules for the forums need to be created, I will add to this thread once I get time to create them.

RE: Forums code of conduct/good behavior - Added by Felix Schäfer over 14 years ago

Well, I have more of an "extend as needed" stance on this, but okay :-)

RE: Forums code of conduct/good behavior - Added by Eric Davis over 14 years ago

Muntek Singh wrote:

  1. One(1) spam post makes you a spammer. Account should be deleted and blocked

For blantant spam, 1 post should be deleted and blocked. For questionable, I think we should be a little forgiving: edit/delete the content and notify the user in the forums that their post was removed becasue it's against the code of conduct.

  1. I propose a wiki page "Commercial Offerings" that is strictly controlled. One text line a one link per advertisers. Each advertiser is allowed on thread on the forums, cross-linking their solution in other threads is considered spamming and grounds for a ban.

I've added CommercialOfferings. I think up to three links is fine: 1 external link to the service, 1 link to the forum thread on redmine.org, and 1 link to the user. I've locked the page for now, but should it be unlocked or moderated?

Eric Davis

RE: Forums code of conduct/good behavior - Added by Holger Just over 14 years ago

Eric Davis wrote:

For blantant spam, 1 post should be deleted and blocked. For questionable, I think we should be a little forgiving: edit/delete the content and notify the user in the forums that their post was removed becasue it's against the code of conduct.

There is a certain three-strike model, which is rather popular in certain circles (esp. in France and UK). So I would propose 2 second yellow card for non-obvious cases.

I've added CommercialOfferings. I think up to three links is fine: 1 external link to the service, 1 link to the forum thread on redmine.org, and 1 link to the user. I've locked the page for now, but should it be unlocked or moderated?

As said in IRC, I would also like to add a short description of the service (200 chars max). Having good faith, I would like to see the page unlocked but looked closely after to avoid spamming and breaches of the rules. If that fails it can still be locked. That same principle could be applied to WeAreUsingRedmine (also with stated rules)

--Holger

RE: Forums code of conduct/good behavior - Added by Muntek Singh over 14 years ago

I disagree with 3 strike model, more in-line with edavis's suggestion.

I'm down with 200 Chars. I vote moderated and updates through one of us only.

RE: Forums code of conduct/good behavior - Added by Felix Schäfer over 14 years ago

I'd like to recenter this discussion to a code of conduct before we discuss how we can accommodate commercial offerings, though quickly my thoughts on this: I'm OK with the wiki page as of now + 200 chars description + also being of good faith, I'll let it open until it is necessary to moderate it. If you think we should discuss this more, please open a new thread.

Back to the topic of the forums: I'll vote for the middle way, i.e. blatant spammers (first action or one of the first actions is spamming) are locked without notice, users who do "normal" stuff and let something we deem spamming slip get 1 warning and the post is edited right away to remove the spam, locked at the second attempt.

The Forum for commercial offerings + 1 thread / announcer seems to be ok for everyone, any objections?

One last thing that needs to be cleared before we can implement any kind of rule: who has the right to block users, whom should be report spam users to, and could we get some mechanism to see on the user's page if they already have been warned and by whom? (would that be possible with a custom field viewable only to moderators/admins?)

RE: Forums code of conduct/good behavior - Added by Muntek Singh over 14 years ago

We need to get with JPL and give you and some others more "Forum Moderation" rights. So you can delete spam users, add bans, etc.

No objects to Forum for commercial offerings + 1 thread/per.

I still vote that the wiki page be moderated.

RE: Forums code of conduct/good behavior - Added by Eric Davis over 14 years ago

I've created a wiki page for the final ForumCodeOfConduct.

Eric Davis

RE: Forums code of conduct/good behavior - Added by TaskPoint Project over 14 years ago

Eric Davis wrote:

I've created a wiki page for the final ForumCodeOfConduct.

Eric Davis

May be it worth while to make it sticky topic on forum itself so it would be more transparent then post somewhere on wiki no one would be able to find :) just my $0.02

RE: Forums code of conduct/good behavior - Added by Holger Just over 14 years ago

Igor, I want to be honest with you: one of the reasons why we felt the desire to come up with this code of conduct was your behavior on the forums. It is really stressful to see you hop on about every thread even remotely mentioning Redmine hosting and trying to sell your stuff. This kind of spammy behavior is clearly against this code.

So consider yourself officially warned here. You can keep posting about updates to your service on your dedicated thread TaskPoint - Redmine based hosted service though.

--Holger

RE: Forums code of conduct/good behavior - Added by Igor Balk over 14 years ago

So consider yourself officially warned here. You can keep posting about updates to your service on your dedicated thread TaskPoint - Redmine based hosted service though.

--Holger

Point taken :) But from the UX point of view (and this is my official position as UX team member) "code" should be liked from sticky post on the forum itself just to make it more accessible and clear.

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